My Love Does it Good

My two loves, Chris and Paul.

He is still kickin at 68, my friends. He's looking good, right? And he played for nearly 3 hours, with only the short space between encores to rake a rest. Unless you count switching from the guitar to the piano as a rest. (Which I do not.)

Us in the car. We're already excited! And we haven't even left the car. I think we knew it would be amazing.

The Jordan High Beetdiggers were excited too. AS THEY SHOULD BE!

Waiting for the show to begin.

Oh, hey new pants. Thanks for making my ankles look so skinny. Preciate ya.

How great is this lady? Not cornrows lady, the other one. Cornrows lady does not get my vote. But this gal, was totally working the long flowing hair, the tat, and the pierced nose. She was super adorable. I would kill to have hair like that when I'm old. (Or when I'm 24.)

We're not in the car anymore and we're STILL excited! Also, check out our good seats. Thanks, Papa!

Here we're upset that they are showing a video montage of Paul's career but not the actual Paul. Or maybe we were trying to look hot and failing. I'm really not sure, to be honest.

Well, that concludes the picture portion of this guy. You all know how I love dealing with pictures. The original intent was to put those ones of Paul down at the bottom, you know, chronological, but that doesn't always happen.

The point is--I know I exaggerate a LOT, and talk in superlatives a LOT. But please believe me when I say that this was the most incredible concert I ever have or ever will attend, and among the top 20 nights of my LIFE. It was incredible.

Let me begin by saying that my love affair with the Beatles started at a very young age. When CDs started to be a thing, my dad decided to replace all their tapes and bought a bunch. I remember him buying CDs of Rubber Soul, Help, Magical Mystery Tour, Sergeant Pepper, and probably a few others too. Since they were new, and I liked the songs, I would sit and listen to them. And since I'm a nerdy kid, I also pulled out the lyrics and learned all those. (To this day I know the crazy lyrics of I Am The Walrus, like "sitting on a cornflake, waiting for the van to come.") Baby You Can Drive My Car was my most favorite song in the WORLD for like 5 years as a kid. I seriously didn't realize that kids my age listened to music that was currently being produced until I was like 10 or 11. I know, I was super cool. Don't be jealous.

Let me also tell you that Sir Paul was not always my favorite. I KNOW, RIGHT? There was a brief period of my life where the grooviness and rebelliousness of John Lennon seduced me, and he was my number 1. But my priorities have since shifted, and Mr. McCartney has been my fave for quite some time now.

However, in my economic situation, when I heard he was coming to town, my first inclination was not to run out and buy tickets. You know, they're pricey and I'm somewhat practical. However, sometimes you have the coolest parents of all time. You see, my parents bought tickets for themselves, and other tickets they intended to sell online. The online selling wasn't happening--THANK MY LUCKY STARS--so a week or so ago my dad called me into his office at work, saying, "Erin, can you come talk to me about something?" I went in, thinking he wanted me to shred something or get a file, and he said, "How would you like to go to Paul McCartney?" And I said, "With all of my heart. How can we make that happen?" And that is the story of how I ended up at the musical event of Utah's lifetime.

Let me now tell you some things that happened that I loved at this concert.

Paul is super charming and adorable, just like he was back in the day. My mom yelled, "We love you Paul!" and he said he loved her too. Stuff like that.

He talked about John Lennon. He started off by saying, "You know how sometimes you want to say something, but you don't?" And then talked about how he wrote this song after John died, and it's a conversation he wanted to have but they never did. I had never heard the song, but it's called Here Today if you're interested. And before he played it he said, "Let's hear it for John!" and we all cheered a lot, because hello.

He gave a tribute to George Harrison too, which was so sweet. He picked up a ukulele and said how George was awesome on the ukulele, and how one time he was at his house and said, "Hey George, I learned one of your songs on the ukulele," and then they played it together. And then he played Something, which is such a good one. On the screen behind the band, they had different stuff for each song, of course, and during Something they did a slideshow of George Harrison, it was really sweet.

Another little tribute which got me a little choked up was right before he played My Love, he said he wrote it for Linda, and it was for everyone who was in love. And he didn't go into it more than that, but some reason it really got me.

They played Baby You Can Drive My Car, which I loved, because, as aforementioned--favorite song for a long time.

Um. . . . FIREWORKS. Do you know how much I love fireworks? I LOVE FIREWORKS. So, let's review. Favorite band--Beatles. Favorite Beatle--Paul. Favorite other thing--Fireworks. All of them combined--I COULD HARDLY HANDLE IT. Seriously. They went off during Live and Let Die, which I like, so I was taking a little video, but then when they started I was too excited to not jump around so I turned the camera off. But then I thought I might want a little documentation so I turned it back on.

Which brings me to the videos I posted below. I just want everyone to know that I am fully aware that they are not very interesting. They are short little clips, not full songs, and seriously, they're not that great. But I wanted to put them on here so I did.

He was really cute about talking to us in between songs. After one particularly raucous guitar song, he was talking about how Jimi Hendrix used to do crazy stuff on the guitar, and it would get his guitar really out of tune. He said he was at a show once where Jimi went nuts, and then after the song he was like, "Is Eric out there?" And Paul said, "You know, looking for Eric Clapton, to come tune his guitar for him. And Eric WAS there, but he was all embarrassed and didn't want to do it." And then he talked about how cool it was to know those guys. Um, yeah. It is cool. He also said that when they released Sergeant Pepper, it was on a Friday, and by Sunday Jimi Hendrix had learned the entire album and was doing covers at shows, and what a cool tribute to them that was.

He was commenting on the crowd of course, and saying how great we are in Utah or whatever, and then he said, "There's a lady up here with a sign that says, 'Paul, you're in Utah. Marry us?'" And we all laughed together. He gave a shout out to the people in the back, told them they were not forgotten. At the very end of the show there was confetti. When he came back for his first encore--because he did two, bless that man--he ran out waving a Utah flag, and one of the guys in the band was waving a British flag. I thought that was a cute thing to do.

I'm just now realizing how much I had to say about this. I told Chris I was just going to put up the pictures and say a couple of things, and then this happened. So there you go. I REALLY, really love Paul McCartney, and I REALLY, really loved going to that concert. I never cried of happiness, but I was close. It was incredibly incredible and I will remember it for the rest of my life.

And just remember, in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make. That's true.